


Grief

by cyaneidae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Acceptance, Anger, Angst, Bargaining, Depression, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief, Lots of it, Pain, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers, bandaid on a bullet hole, or at least try to, sorry for all the feels, this is how I cope with the end of TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5610403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyaneidae/pseuds/cyaneidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"According to Elisabeth Kubler Ross, when we are dying, or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinct stages of grief."</p>
<p>Someone--who certainly doesn't have children--suggests she pretend he's dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief

**Author's Note:**

> _According to Elisabeth Kubler Ross, when we are dying, or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinct stages of grief. We go into denial, because the loss is so unthinkable—we can’t imagine it’s true. We become angry with everyone—angry with survivors, angry with ourselves. Then we bargain. We beg, we plead, we offer everything we have—we offer up our souls in exchange for just one more day. When the bargaining has failed, and the anger is too hard to maintain, we fall into depression, despair, until finally we have to accept that we had done everything we can. We let go. We let go and move into acceptance._

**Denial** : Someone--who certainly doesn't have children--suggests she pretend he's dead. It isn't exactly a lie (she's mourning what's been lost and he's assumed a new identity)...and she buries herself in enough work that it isn't hard to forget it's not the truth, either.

They don't run after him or beg him to come home.

Instead, their trio splits up for the first time in decades as they head to opposite ends of the galaxies (hiding from the problem, hiding from each other).

  
**Anger** : It's been a long day of frustrating meetings and councils and people asking her questions about insignificant things. So it isn't surprising (though it is embarrassing) when she yells at the man who brings her the news that the First Order has wrecked devastation on one of their bases, killing dozens and obtaining precious intel on the Resistance in the process. 

He probably would've gotten off with only a deep frown of hers had he not included the bit about Kylo Ren leading the havoc.

   
**Bargaining** : She doesn't pray, not exactly (life experience has taught her that her hopes and dreams mean nothing when the Dark side is involved), but sometimes she pleads desperately to the father she's never wanted to acknowledge to save her son. She's heard enough from Luke's description of "Force ghosts" to know Anakin Skywalker can hear her, even if she can't see him.

Sometimes she wonders why he's appeared to her brother a number of times but never to her. More often she bitterly curses him for inflicting pain upon three generations of their family.

And a few times she wonders if he appeared to Be--no, Kylo Ren--and caused this whole mess in the first place. His misguided admiration of Darth Vader certainly didn't come from anything _she_ said, as she had absolutely refused to ever talk about her father to his grandson.

  
**Depression** : She's never had much use for the Force. It's why she refused her brother's offer to train her, oh so long ago (that and the fact that she worried even then that she was too old to learn, to change). In fact, she's pretty sure the Force has brought her nothing but hurt--the wind knocked out of her when Alderaan is destroyed, her heart skipping a beat when Luke loses his hand and nearly his life, the never-ending dull ache in her chest since her son committed his first murder.

It is not exactly fun to know when the people she loves are in pain and there is absolutely nothing she can do to help them.

It is even worse when she asks her husband to do something they should've done long ago and she instantly has a crushing, devastating feeling of sadness, a feeling that their intertwining paths will not cross again.

  
**Acceptance** : It is Alderaan all over again, except it's not. It's one man--one frustrating, burdensome, scruffy-looking Nerf herder that she loves with all her heart--and the pain isn't sudden. It comes on gradually, like the heart attack that she always chided Han to watch for signs of, building within her chest and arms and legs until it climaxes and she can't breathe, can't even stand up straight. It then feels like she's thirty feet underwater and she can't get to the surface fast enough. It feels like the time she lost Ben on Endor and swore she'd never see him again.

And then it hits her. Who did this. _Who killed him_.

It isn't a lie anymore to say that Ben Solo is dead.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote (which inspired this fic) is borrowed from Grey's Anatomy, season 6 (episodes 1-2 I think?). I've also read the actual book by Elisabeth Kubler Ross, "On Death and Dying," and would recommend it (but be sure to have tissues handy, which you probably needed for this fic as well).
> 
> I apologize profusely for any tears or angst that this fic produced (sorry!). I also apologize for any screwed up canon; I've only seen TFA + the prequels once (but the original trilogy a lot), and have never read the novels...I tried to not reference any planets/events I couldn't remember definitely happening. There's also very little reference to Ben's childhood for fear of making things up that don't exist in the SW universe.
> 
> And, if you care, here's a continuation of the GA monologue, from the end of the episode:
> 
> _Grief may be a thing we all have in common, but it looks different on everyone. It isn't just death we have to grieve. It's life. It's loss. It's change. And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes, has to hurt so bad, the thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime. That's how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can't breathe, that's how you survive. By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you won't feel this way. It won't hurt this much. Grief comes in its own time for everyone, in its own way. So the best we can do, the best anyone can do, is try for honesty. The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief is that you can't control it. The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes. And let it go when we can. The very worst part is that the minute you think you're past it, it starts all over again. And always, every time, it takes your breath away._
> 
> _There are five stages of grief. They look different on all of us, but there are always five. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance._


End file.
